The Nearness of God

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

   be acceptable in your sight,

   O God, my strength and my redeemer.” ~Psalm 19:14

The Nearness of God

That’s what seems to come to me today. Therefore, let’s consider this text from today’s Gospel; “Repent, The kingdom of heaven has come near”

   ~Matthew 3:2

Many years ago one cold and blustery Friday in December when I was a young priest in Hyde Park, I found myself in the bank across the street from the church. Suddenly dark clouds and a violent wind whirled outside. For a moment everyone stood still. Well, you know me; I am not one to let such a moment pass by; I wheeled about, fierced myself up with eyes blazing to say; “Repent!” There was a moment of suspended animation, then finally we all had a good laugh for ourselves. 

John the Baptist, likewise, was a fierce and edgy sort. His appearance in the wilderness, clothed in camel’s hair, his diet of locusts and wild honey is an indication of his somewhat feral nature. When it came to the Pharisees and Sadducees he did not hold back or mince his words; “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?” Fair warning! It is a matter of ironic interest to me that for both John and Jesus, it was the fundamentalists of the day who proved to be the source of violent danger.

And yet folks flocked to him. His message; “Comfort ye, Comfort ye, my people!” drew us to him. When he appeared; he proclaimed the nearness of God. In the midst of that arid desert; in the rocky, dusty earthen experience of human suffering and injustice; John proclaimed Good News. The Waters of Baptism make new life possible. Copious amounts of water go hand in hand with the extravagant promise of God that we can indeed die to sin and rise to newness of life. God can bury bury sin and death and raise us up in the power of Christ’s resurrection. Rejoice! God is near.

The Christian hope is built brick by brick and person by person into a whole new realm of eternal life.  The nearness of God becomes an unmistakable sign of who we are. Jesus is very near to us. John said so. “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”

This blessed Advent season is full of the expectation of a new birth. That expectation is of the sort that is inevitable given the condition Mary finds herself in. She ponders what all these things might mean that the Angel Gabriel announced to her. Neither she nor Joseph could possibly understand it all. But there was no time for that. The Nearness of God was upon them and within her.

So they journeyed on from Nazareth to Bethlehem; an arduous and dangerous journey of just over 97 miles. Imagine that! Not an easy trip for anybody on foot, let alone a woman on a donkey in the fullness of her pregnancy. The Nearness of God comes to us much like every earthen journey; fraught with danger, distance, and possibility, requiring determination.

Thank God! The Nearness of the Holy One is with us every step of the way. I believe this is why we flock to John the Baptist. He proclaims the kind of repentance that understands our predicament. Like Mary and Joseph, there is no way we can possibly understand what it all means while going through it.

I remember when our boys were young. Those years were busy and demanding. After dinner, we put the three of them into the tub, dried them off, put on their P.J’s and sent them off to bed. But because of our baptism, I also remember story time every night. I remember lighting the sacred candle. We said our prayers. And then there was slumber in the Nearness of God. 

There were mouths to be fed, dishes to be done and endless loads of laundry, and a living to be earned to provide for it all. The whole journey was and continues to be a demanding one. If we do not stop to remember the Nearness of God in the Joy of Repentance, we miss so much of life. It is a sad and depressing world that doesn’t know the Nearness of God.

“Repent, the kingdom of God has come near.”

I think we flock to John and to Jesus precisely because in them we see the nearness of God.

Throughout the Biblical narrative we read the record of God’s Nearness. Today the Prophet Isaiah proclaims: 

“A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,

   and a little child shall lead them.

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God

   as the waters cover the sea.”

Likewise the Psalmist points to a kingdom not yet completely fulfilled but no less hoped for.

“Give the King your justice, O God, *

The King shall defend the needy among the people; *

       he shall rescue the poor and crush the oppressor.

He shall live as long as the sun and moon endure”

In Sacred history we see Jesus as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and he shall reign for ever!

These words sing to our hearts in the Nearness of God.

As for the one in whose name you have dedicated and consecrated yourselves in and from this sacred place, he writes to us today in words of immediate and practical value; 

“May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus”…and…”Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

Paul brings the nearness of God front and center right up to the present moment. Here we are living as Paul urged us to live. I am grateful beyond words that you live this way because you become living evidence that Jesus is indeed present in the nearness of our friendship with one another. 

When John invites us into repentance I suspect it is more with a note of Joy than it is with a note of Severity. After all, John’s point was that the kingdom is near. God is near. God is no further away than Forgiveness, Reconciliation, or the next act of Compassion and Love. This is how Jesus is with us when he heals the sick, teaches the crowds, feeds the multitudes, or overturns the tables in the Temple Precincts, then dies, puts our sin away and rises again in Glory. 

God has come as near to us as the Holy Child who is born to us yet again this year. Prepare ye the way for the Holy One in your hearts!

Repentance is a matter of deep Joy. God’s day is not a day of darkness and gloom as it was on that that Friday in Lent on a Boston Bank so many years ago. Repentance is a matter of Joy to John, to Jesus and to all of us who would embrace this new life born to us in the nearness of God. 

“Repent for the kingdom has come near.” Amen. 

In the Name of God; the Most Holy, Undivided and Everlasting Trinity. Amen.

God's Difficult People

God’s Difficult People

Kathleen was a difficult person. She sat in the front row with her brother at the 8AM service every week. It was like looking at a picture of American Gothic. All that was missing was the pitchfork. What a way to start off a sunny Sunday morning! I think she disapproved of me. After all, I was Irish. I married an Italian. She arranged her face in every imaginable contortion when I preached. I don’t think she liked what I had to say. Even when I tried saying things I hoped she’d like, she made faces. 

One day in a fit of pique she called me on the phone and told me in a somewhat pompous tone; “In view of Christian Charity, I think we need to agree not to speak to one another.” 

Considering how things were going between us, I managed to say; “My good woman, that’s the first nice thing you said to me since coming to this church!” 

Some time later, she was hospitalized and she was informed by her doctor that she had a very serious heart condition. She had but a short time to live. She was my parishioner, so no matter what, I visited her. When I came into her hospital room, she broke into tears and she poured out her heart to me. We prayed together as she prepared for enter God’s nearer presence.

The day had come, thank God, for forgiveness. 

What does it mean to you to forgive and to be forgiven?

How many times are you to forgive? Seven?

How forgiving are you?

Jesus taught us to pray; “forgive us our trespasses and we forgive those who trespass against us.”

The word “forgiveness” takes center stage in the Gospel Proclamation. 

John’s ministry of proclaiming forgiveness occurs at a particular time and place. It was in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, AD 14-37. Toward the south in Judea, Pontius Pilate was the governor, AD 26-36. Herod was the tetrarch, that is to say a regional overseer in Galilee, an area north of Judea; 4BC—AD39. Further north still, well north of Samaria are Ituraea and Trachonitis, regions ruled by Philip; and then Lysanias was the ruler of Abilene also in the far north. As to the High Priesthood at the time, Annas was succeeded by Caiaphas. Luke makes clear that John’s ministry extended over a period of time, and covers a significant amount of geography. 

John’s ministry was one of proclaiming forgiveness of sin through the waters of Baptism. There were probably difficult folks then too, families had feuds, folks were likely estranged from one another. 

John proclaimed a message of forgiveness to a people who lived under a brutal regime of the aforementioned strong men. It was welcome news and John was much beloved. His was a voice of one crying in the wilderness or so it seemed. So much of the news then must have fallen on jaded and disheartened ears. 

The occupation forces and the repressive tactics of oppression made life cheap then. Many’s the time, coming and going in and out of town, someone would be hung upon a cross to die as a sign to anyone who might dare to question authority.  The power of contemporary dictatorial leadership was absolute. You were not free to question the authorities. 

Democracy was long forgotten from that brief shining moment in Athens when folks were free to debate vigorously and then vote. It would be a long, long time coming before folks were free again. 

Democracy does not come easily. And when it does, it can disappear through an erosion that is hardly perceptible unless people are especially watchful, involved, informed and well educated. So wrote the Founding Fathers of our Democracy. 

But back to John! Imagine meeting John, with his fierce fervor telling you of your place in God’s salvation plan. Imagine him telling you of God’s forgiveness. Imagine John baptizing you in the River Jordan. His message to you was that you were free from the bonds of political violence. Free from hate! Free from feuding pettiness. Free from your own inner demons!

Imagine John telling you; now you are God’s own child. There is a whole new kingdom that belongs to God, and you are a citizen of that kingdom. When you become a citizen of that kingdom you are born again. You are alive forever. 

It was John’s belief that he was sent to announce the coming of Jesus; the Word of God made flesh and blood. He got all excited when he told his followers;

'Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled,

and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’"

This is exciting news. The Great Leveler is coming to us. 

How can you contain yourself when you think about it. In the eyes of The Great Leveler there is no rich and poor, slave and free, male or female. There are no outcasts. Whoever you are; no race, ethnicity gender, class, or orientation can separate you from the Love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You are all One in Jesus!

John is the one, who in Salvation History, proclaims the Advent of the new ministry of Jesus.

John was born to Elisabeth. She had been a childless woman, until the Archangel Gabriel announced that God had found favor with her. Zechariah held the new born baby in his arms and exulted in God’s Salvation plan like Hanna had done at the birth of Samuel, and in the way Mary would do at the birth of Jesus. God’s surprises the humble poor with the gift of life because of the goodness they exemplify in this world. Zechariah’s mouth is opened after a long silence, and his tongue is freed to sing; 

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; *

He has raised up for us a mighty savior, *

born of the house of his servant David.

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, *

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,

John was a prophet. He came to warn us about the error of our ways. Life is too short for all the hatred. This is why repentance is at the heart of forgiveness and Baptism. John is God’s messenger. He is like a refiner’s fire, like fuller’s soap. He seeks to purify us and make us clean. 

Ultimately John got himself arrested and beheaded. After all if you proclaim something about a King and a Kingdom, you can make a paranoid schizophrenic Tetrarch very nervous. Talk about difficult persons! Herod and Pilate had no idea of what John and Jesus meant about his Kingdom and his Kingship. How could they? They had no idea of God, repentance, forgiveness, and eternal life. 

But God is our stock and trade. Forgiveness, repentance and eternal life are all mixed into the waters of Baptism where you and I were washed and made pure and clean. 

Forgiveness is a tricky business because it may require facing some rather difficult persons; there may be mental illness, substance abuse,  and hateful, hurtful folk. The truth of the matter is that there are too many difficult personalities in life. Good Lord, we cannot even govern ourselves because of political gridlock. Truth be told, each of us is a difficult person to somebody!

Thankfully, I’ve learned a thing or two about dealing with difficult persons in the years since I first encountered Kathleen. 

Listen up sinners! John is still here proclaiming Baptism as the Way to forgiveness. He is still a voice of one crying in the wilderness. “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!.”

Empty you hearts and let go the hurt. Breathe in the fullness of God’s sacred silence into your empty lungs. There it is. Don’t wait for the doctor to tell you that you have the very worst kind of heart trouble and you have but a short time to live.

Now is the time to repent and believe! Now is the time to make room in your heart for Jesus. It’s never too late. Kathleen and I found this out a very long time ago. And Kathleen, I pray for you now as I pray for you often. Kathleen, won’t you pray for me too!

In the Name of God; the Most Holy, Undivided, and Everlasting Trinity. Amen.

Fr Paul